When you buy a new car, it’s only natural to think about how long you’ll be driving it before it finally gives out. For most cars, the limit is 200,000 miles, about 12 years. There is, however, one car that stands out from the rest, and that car belonged to a man who lived and breathed driving. Irv Gordon and his Volvo P1800S covered a whopping 3,250,257 miles. We’re talking an average of over 60,000 miles a year for personal use for over 50 years. When he bought the car back in 1966, he picked it up on a Friday afternoon, and by Monday morning he was back at the dealership for the car’s first service at 1,500 miles. Three million miles is no small feat for a vehicle, especially a small sports car from 1966. Gordon bought the car when he was 25, paying an entire year’s salary of $4,150 and unknowingly taking the first step in what would become a history-making adventure.
For the next 5 decades, he drove as much as possible, covering the equivalent of 120 laps of the planet or 7 round trips to the moon in his little Volvo. It earned his car the title of “all-time highest mileage car in the world.” Gordon’s daily commute to and from his middle-school teaching job was 125 miles, but to hit the massive milestone of 3 million miles, he was averaging just over 170 miles every single day. The most impressive part of the car is the strength of the transmission, with the 4-speed manual surviving the entire 3 million miles without breaking down. That’s something that’s unheard of with today’s cars. While the engine had a rebuild at 675,000 miles and again just shy of 3 million miles, the engine block itself was still original, which gives credit to the team behind the engineering at Volvo. While 52 years of driving anything is impressive, the numbers are mind-boggling:
- • Original gearbox and transmission: 3,250,257 miles
- • Original engine: 675,000 before rebuild
- • Original clutch: 450,000 miles
- • 130,000 gallons of gasoline
- • 3,714 quarts of oil
- • 928 oil filters
- • 520 spark plugs
- • 180 tires
What’s really mind-blowing is the fact that for a car he paid just over $4,000 for in 1966, Gordon would have spent around $187,000 on gasoline over 52 years, based on historical gas prices. In the words of Gordon himself, “There was always somewhere to go, and the drive was part of the pleasure of the adventure."
